doronkatz Foundation Sprint Readiness
Assess whether a Foundation Sprint fits the team's current situation. Most sprints that fail were sprints that should not have been run. A 30-45 minute readiness diagnostic catches that failure mode before two days of facilitated work are spent.
Family contract: docs/reference/skill-families/foundation-sprint-skills-contract.md. This skill is a member of foundation-sprint-skills and conforms to the family frontmatter and Decider Checkpoint requirements.
When to Use
- A team is considering starting a Foundation Sprint and needs a fast diagnosis before committing two days.
- A founder or PM has a "should we run a Foundation Sprint?" question and wants structured input rather than a vibes check.
- An existing sprint commitment is on the calendar and the team wants to validate that prerequisites are in place.
- Re-running a Foundation Sprint after invalidated assumptions: use to confirm new context is ready.
When NOT to Use
- The team has already decided to run the sprint and just needs the brief. Use
tool-foundation-sprint-briefinstead. - The team needs deep customer discovery: run customer research or problem framing first; the Foundation Sprint depends on existing customer knowledge.
- The decision is small and a full Foundation Sprint is overkill. Use a lighter prioritization or decision tool.
- No Decider is available and one cannot be appointed. Foundation Sprint requires fast strategic calls; without authority it produces options without commitment.
What This Skill Produces
A single bundled artifact with five sections:
- Readiness verdict: Go / Conditional Go / Wait
- Diagnosis: what is in place, what is missing, what is uncertain
- Recommended preconditions (when verdict is Wait or Conditional Go): the prerequisite work the team should do before the sprint
- Recommended attendee list (when verdict is Go or Conditional Go): the 3-5 people who should be in the room, with role expectations
- Pre-sprint activities (when verdict is Go): the prep work to complete in the days before Day 1
See references/TEMPLATE.md for the canonical structure and references/EXAMPLE.md for a worked example using the Brainshelf book-catalog thread.
Inference Inputs
The skill runs an inference pass over these inputs to produce the verdict:
| Input | What the skill does with it |
|---|---|
| Initiative description | Determines whether a Foundation Sprint is the right tool (vs problem framing, customer research, or a Design Sprint) |
| Team composition draft | Checks roster against the Foundation Sprint role requirements; flags missing roles |
| Decider name and availability | Confirms Decider can attend both days; flags partial availability as Conditional Go risk |
| Existing customer/market knowledge level (self-assessed 1-10) | Below 5 indicates deep discovery is needed first; 5-7 indicates Conditional Go with research prep; 8+ indicates Go |
| (Optional) Existing competitor and alternative knowledge | Flags gaps that can be closed by overnight prep |
| (Optional) Logistics constraints | Confirms two days can actually be cleared |
If a load-bearing input is missing or low-confidence, the skill flags it explicitly and proposes how to close the gap before the sprint.
Readiness Criteria (8 Canonical Checks)
The skill evaluates the team against these eight criteria, drawn from Knapp/Zeratsky (Click) and Character Capital's Foundation Sprint guide:
- Initiative is named and concrete. The team can name the project, product area, or strategic question.
- The stakes are meaningful. A wrong starting direction would be costly.
- The team has existing knowledge. Real customer, market, competitor, or domain context to make informed choices.
- The Decider is available. Strategic calls can be made during the sprint.
- The team is small enough. No more than five core decision participants is preferred.
- Inputs are collected. Existing research, customer examples, competitor notes, metrics are ready.
- The output has a path to testing. The team can use a Design Sprint, experiment, customer research, or another validation method afterward.
- The organization tolerates explicit tradeoffs. Foundation Sprint forces choosing a top bet and a backup, not preserving every possibility.
| Pattern | Verdict |
|---|---|
| All 8 criteria met cleanly | Go |
| 1-2 criteria are "yellow flags" but addressable in evening prep | Conditional Go with documented prep |
| 3 or more criteria fail, or any of 1-4 is a hard fail | Wait with recommended prerequisite work |
Treat the criteria as load-bearing, not a checklist to game. A team that papers over a real gap with "yes, technically" should get a Conditional Go with the gap surfaced.
Common Pitfalls
- Skipping the diagnostic because "we're going to run it anyway." This is the most common cause of failed sprints. The diagnostic costs 45 minutes; the failed sprint costs 16 hours of team time plus opportunity cost.
- Treating Conditional Go as Go without doing the prep. Conditional Go means "Go after closing these gaps." If the gaps are not closed by Day 1 morning, the sprint enters the failure mode the diagnostic was meant to prevent.
- Confusing readiness assessment with problem framing. This skill assesses whether to run a Foundation Sprint, not whether the team has the right problem. If the problem is unclear, the verdict is Wait with "do problem framing first" as the precondition.
- No Decider, no sprint. A team with no Decider available is not ready, full stop. Appointing a "Decider for the day" who lacks real authority does not solve this.
- Cargo-cult readiness. Reading the criteria and answering yes to all eight without checking does not produce readiness. The skill's value is in the honest diagnosis.
Canonical Sources
- Knapp, J., and Zeratsky, J. Click: How to Make What People Want. Foundation Sprint readiness guidance.
- Character Capital. "Foundation Sprint guide." https://www.character.vc/guide/foundation-sprint
- Design Sprint Academy. "Foundation Sprint readiness criteria for enterprise." Used for the enterprise-context adjustments to canonical readiness.
Cross-Skill Usage
This skill is the entry point of the foundation-sprint-skills family. It has no prerequisites (the metadata.prerequisites field is intentionally empty).
When the verdict is Go, the natural next invocation is tool-foundation-sprint-brief to set up the sprint logistics. When the verdict is Wait, the team typically does prerequisite work (problem framing, customer research) before re-invoking this skill.
tool-note-and-vote may be invoked once during the readiness conversation if the team disagrees on whether a Foundation Sprint is the right tool. In practice, this is rare; the diagnostic is usually conclusive.
Decider Checkpoint
This skill ends with a Decider Checkpoint in references/TEMPLATE.md. The Decider signs off on the verdict (Go / Conditional Go / Wait) and explicitly accepts the diagnosis. Without Decider sign-off, the verdict is advisory; with sign-off, it is the commitment that triggers (or postpones) the sprint.